Lacey Luzzi: Sliced (Lacey Luzzi Mafia Mysteries Book 13)

by Gina LaManna

  “Now talk,” I said. “It better be good.”

  “Oh, it’s good,” Meg said. “I’m here to wake you up in honor of the semi-finals. Only the top four from this round will advance to the finals.”

  “What time do they start?”

  “Ten a.m.,” Meg said, “but I need to get dressed, get my hair and nails done, and you know, get started baking. Those bakers get moving at the crack of sunrise.”

  “Why is it important I’m there at this so-called crack of sunrise?”

  “You’re my assistant,” Meg said. “I still haven’t decided what I’m going to present. I’m doing two bakes and you can choose the better one.”

  “Do you have time for that?”

  “I will with your help,” she said. “Get dressed. I’d prefer if you suit up in one of them cute little sequin numbers that magician’s assistants wear.”

  “But you’re not a magician, and I’m not really your assistant.”

  “Just you wait—give me a few hours, and you might reconsider.”

  “Which part?”

  “That I’m a magician in the kitchen,” Meg said. “Now get dressed because you’re my bodyguard.”

  “Speaking of bodyguards, how did you get into my house?”

  “A key.”

  “You don’t have a key.”

  “I didn’t have a key,” Meg said. “But now I do.”

  “How’d you get a key?”

  “How does one get anything?” Meg shrugged. “They take it. Now, get moving. I can almost see the sun and that means we’re late.”

  I trekked back to my room and flopped on the bed. After one second of tense silence, Anthony’s tree-trunk of an arm flopped over me.

  “Is she gone?”

  “Um,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  “Will she come back in here?”

  “I also don’t know the answer to that.”

  “If the answer is yes, I’ll shoot her,” Anthony said. “Just say the word.”

  “Anthony.”

  “It’s my house. I’m just defending myself.”

  “From Meg?”

  “I’m defending my privacy,” he said. “I don’t have any pants on.”

  “I know, and while I highly approve of that, I really did promise I’d help her today. It’s the semi-final.”

  “Not to mention, you think that you can catch a murderer by going undercover at the bake-off.”

  “That is part of it.”

  “A big part.”

  “Somewhat big.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Anthony said. “Why don’t you tell Meg that you’ll meet her there in an hour?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Anthony nuzzled against me, the warmth of his body spreading to mine as he tugged me close. “Bella’s asleep. The house is quiet. Need I say more?”

  A loud crash came from the kitchen downstairs, followed by a series of expletives. Then a loud, “Sorry!”

  “You were saying?” I prodded sweetly.

  “The house would be quiet if she were gone.” Anthony’s hands danced a mambo over my stomach. He inched my nightshirt up and snapped the edge of my undies. “She can manage on her own for an hour, can’t she?”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled, all hot and bubbly on the inside. “I suppose she could.”

  Anthony rolled me to him and pressed his lips hard to mine. He was getting a little creative with his persuasion techniques when we both heard it. One tiny squeak. Then a giggle.

  I ducked my head under the covers and pretended not to hear it. Anthony’s hands rested on my sides. We both held our breath, as if that would make the baby fall back to sleep.

  Then came the thump, thump, thump as Bella’s feet banged against her mattress. By the time I got up the courage to peek out from underneath the covers, I found her gripping the crib bars with both hands and staring directly at me with a gummy grin.

  “She knows,” I whispered to Anthony. “She’s already plotting against us, and she can’t even talk.”

  He sighed. “I’m going back to sleep.”

  “Actually,” I said. “I promised Meg I’d help her, so I’ll just feed Bella, and then we’ll be on our way. Thank you, I love you, I owe you one. A big one.”

  “I WAS WORRIED YOU WEREN’T gonna come with me,” Meg said as I parked my mom-van outside the tent. “When you went back upstairs, for a minute there, I thought you might’ve crawled under the covers with Anthony and thought about ditching me.”

  “What sort of best friend would do that?”

  “Me,” Meg said. “I’d probably do that if Anthony put his arm around me. You know, hypothetically. Not in real life of course, but in some distant, parallel universe where he falls for me instead of you.”

  “It’s freezing,” I said, climbing out of the car. “They’d better have hot chocolate.”

  “How can you eat a cookie without hot chocolate?” Meg wondered. “Of course they have hot chocolate. In fact, you should go scout it out while I set up my bench.”

  Meg gave me a gigantic wink. I gave her the thumbs up back. Spies we were not. But Meg’s idea to scope out the scene we were working with was a good one, so after I checked in alongside Meg and got my assistant’s badge pinned to my coat, I set off to take inventory of the bakers at this year’s bake-off.

  The competition took place inside of a large, Metrodome-like sports facility. Seeing as it was chilly and Minnesota weather in the fall was unpredictable to say the least, an indoor arena was the safest option. Normally, the expansive turf pitch inside the bubble was used for soccer games and the like, but almost magically, it had been transformed into one gigantic kitchen for the bake-off.

  More accurately, I amended to myself, the indoor arena had been converted to house many tiny kitchens. Neat little rows of work benches stood in two lines on either side of a center aisle. Each bench contained a mixer, utensils, an oven and a sink, a stove, and whatever else bakers needed for their tasks. All were color coordinated in pretty shades of pastels.

  Scattered between the benches were beautiful fall floral garlands draped across any spare surface. Tall, crinkly cornstalks had been fastened to the ends of the benches. Oversized bales of hay were stacked haphazardly on wagons, surrounded by scarecrows and pumpkins and gourds. The tent even smelled like fall with the aroma of mulled wine and spiced apple cider sifting through the air.

  “Apple cider?”

  I turned at the familiar voice and found myself face to face with Nellie Davis of The Sugarloaf.

  “I’d love one,” I said, accepting a piping hot, glass mug from Nellie. “Did you make this?”

  “I did. It goes with our entry,” she said with a wink. “But don’t tell anyone.”

  “Oh, wow. Well, it’s great,” I said. “Anyway, how are things looking for The Sugarloaf?”

  “They were looking okay,” she said, glancing around as if distracted. “I don’t know, I’m sure you heard the news. It sort of threw us for a loop.”

  “What news?”

  “The North Star has joined the bake-off,” Nellie said. “It’s the name of a bakery up north. Hence the name of it.”

  “Are they new on the scene?”

  “Only to the bake-off. The actual bakery has been there for over a decade.” Nellie sighed. “The chef is supposedly amazing.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” I told her. “The Sugarloaf has been winning for almost four decades. You guys got this.”

  Nellie gave me a weak smile. “I guess we’ll have to see about that. Anyway, I should be getting back to the bench. Nice to see you.”

  I parted ways from the baker and made my way along the edges of the tent, sipping The Sugarloaf’s spiced cider, which was quite marvelous and a great start to my taste-testing extravaganza. I kept an eye out for other samples, but there were none. I supposed this was a bake-off competition and not Costco, but a girl could dream.

  When I neared the front doors of the facility, I was in for anot
her surprise. A surprise that strutted inside wearing hot pink pants and leopard print heels. I noticed the pants first and for good reason. They were a vibrant, faux leather material that somehow looked good on this woman’s long, lean pins. To match her heels, this woman wore a flowy, leopard print blouse draped luxuriously over her upper half. She had a massive pair of sunglasses over her eyes, and her hair was twisted into a complicated bun atop her head.

  “That’s her,” a voice said in my ear.

  “Who?” I said without thinking.

  “Britta Facelli,” Nellie said, having scurried over to my side to point out the newcomer. “The owner of The North Star bakery.”

  My jaw dropped open. “Britta Facelli is competing?”

  “You know of her?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “I heard rumors she quit her job as a lawyer,” Nellie whispered. “That’s supposedly why she’s here: to revamp her baking career. You know, she was a chef first. She started The North Star bakery and then passed it off to be run by a manager while she came down to the cities to plump up her law career. I heard she’s going back.”

  “Why would she do that? I thought she had a successful career as a lawyer.” I hesitated. “Unless her retiring isn’t a choice?”

  “I don’t know,” Nellie said with a shrug. “But I’m guessing she’s here for the grand prize money. Did you see her clothes? And she’s got a car to match. The woman is high maintenance and proud of it.”

  “And if she wins,” I said, piecing the puzzle together, “she gets a chunk of money to hold her over.”

  “And more importantly,” Nellie continued. “The fame. People would travel to Duluth just to try her baking. She’d be rolling in the dough. Excuse the pun.”

  “I love the pun,” I said. “But that does make sense. So, are you actually worried?”

  “A little bit,” Nellie said. “Everything surrounding Britta is such a mystery. All I know is that she’s probably wanting to win... badly.”

  I looked over to where Britta was setting up shop next to a short man who was probably her assistant. Did she want to win badly enough to kill?

  Chapter 13

  “Let the cookie baking begin,” a voice over the intercom began. “Your time starts now.”

  I’d returned to Meg’s side since the actual baking competition had kicked off, and I stood there feeling helpless while Meg dumped flour from a super-sized mason jar into a pink mixer. She flicked it on with the whisk attachment and an atomic bomb of flour blew into the air.

  “Whoops,” Meg said. “I’m flustered already. Look at me.”

  Meg looked like the gooey marshmallow from the Ghostbusters movie—dusted top to bottom in white and a little squishy around the middle. When she blinked, tiny clouds of flour flapped away like butterflies.

  “Just slather me in butter and lick me up,” Meg said. “Stick a few chocolate chips on me, and I’m basically a cookie.”

  “Watch so you don’t say that too loud,” I said. “You’re a married woman now.”

  “Oh, I know,” Meg said. “Clay’s my inspiration. He loves when I lather myself up in butter and—”

  “Enough, enough,” I said. “Clay might be your husband—”

  “You mean, my smoking hot love boat—”

  “—but he’s still my cousin. I don’t need to know every detail.”

  “I was going to leave some details out,” Meg said. “You just didn’t let me get there.”

  “Speaking of details,” I said. “Don’t you think it’s interesting that none of us knew Britta Facelli was going to be baking today? How’d she slide in under the radar?”

  “How’d I get switched to the cookie competition after hours?” Meg shrugged. “Humans are complicated, and sometimes we owe each other favors.”

  I considered this as Meg began cubing butter on her pink cutting board. Who was Britta close enough with to get her into the competition? Was it a friendly sort of thing, or more of a blackmail sort of thing?

  Sliding onto a hot pink stool at the end of Meg’s bench, I watched Britta from a distance. The cake category of the competition was scheduled to be last, so for now Britta was fueling up with a cup of coffee and tapping away on her cell phone with her long, talon nails.

  It was halfway through the first round of cookie baking when things took a turn for the surprising. Meg had just rolled out her dough and was about to start cutting out shapes when a flurry of activity arrived before Meg’s bench.

  Said flurry of activity was actually a tornado of a man—a man who was about as skinny as one of my thighs. Granted, my thighs weren’t all that skinny seeing as I’d just had a baby for starters, and for seconds, I’d eaten a lot of Meg’s cookies. Plus two lunches at most meals washed down by a semi-stale sugar bomb. The combination did not promote skinny thighs.

  I slouched on my stool and watched Meg for her reaction. I held a piping cup of coffee to my lips and took a sip—surprised when the man pointed a finger at me.

  “You did this to me!” The man finally spoke, accompanying his words with a second finger jab in my direction. “You are banned from the competition!”

  “Who, me?” I thumbed at myself. “Who are you? And what do you think I did?”

  Meg groaned. “How about we don’t do this here, Filip?”

  I crossed my legs on the stool and probably looked as bewildered as I felt. “What are you talking about? What am I doing? I’m literally just sitting here drinking coffee.”

  “You act innocent,” Filip said, “but you’re the reason I am in trouble.”

  “How are you in trouble?”

  “Someone is stalking me.”

  The man’s thick accent made me wonder if I’d heard him right. “Excuse me?”

  “Someone is stalking me,” he repeated. “And it’s all because of you.”

  “I’m not stalking you,” I said. “So, how is this situation my fault?”

  “You called me yesterday to talk about murder. Someone listened, and now they’re trying to intimidate me into keeping silent.”

  “Do you know something?”

  “No!” Filip threw his hands up. “That’s the problem! If I did, I’d tell you.”

  “Maybe it’s not related to the case,” I theorized. “Do you have any idea who might want to come after you in general? Do you have any enemies?”

  “None that I know of. Well, I mean, some. But nobody who would’ve done this.”

  “Why do you think you’re being stalked?”

  “I don’t know why someone wants to stalk me.”

  “No—I mean, what specifically makes you think someone has it out for you?”

  “I’m not imagining it. All of the signs are there.”

  “Such as?”

  “I got two prank calls today. I never get prank calls—someone wanted to hear my voice or something sick like that. Then, I kept seeing someone follow me. I couldn’t tell who they were because it was raining. Jackets and umbrellas were out in full force.”

  “Could you tell if it was a male or a female?”

  “No.” Filip brushed a shock of blonde hair off his forehead. “I just saw the same umbrella over and over again. It couldn’t have been a coincidence.”

  “What did it look like? Plenty of umbrellas look similar.”

  “Not this one. It was leopard print. Pink leopard print.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I didn’t say my stalker had good taste.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?” I stood up and inched closer to Meg who had deftly pretended to ignore most of the conversation. “I’m sorry about all this, but I’m not sure how to help you.”

  “This is your fault! You got me involved in this mess.” Filip gestured toward Meg. “Do something, Meggie. Make your friend help me.”

  Meg flipped a hand on her hip. “I dunno, Filip. It seems like you left out some information when we were talking last night. I thought we were friends. Why didn’t you tell us Britta had
joined the competition late?”

  “I didn’t think it was relevant,” he said. “Now, I must be going before someone sees me out here. I should be in the back, hiding. Hence the disguise.” Filip thumbed at a fedora balanced on his head. “I trust you’ll take care of this?”

  Filip looked to me. He didn’t give me a chance to say no before turning on a heel and hightailing it toward the judge’s room at the back of the building. I was left to stare open mouthed at Meg.

  “Who was that?” Clay asked, startling both Meg and I as he sidled next to the bench. “Is he giving you ladies trouble?”

  Meg looked uncomfortable. “No. He’s just an old friend going through a hard time.”

  Clay didn’t look particularly happy at the explanation. “Oh.”

  “Well, this has been fun,” I said. “But now I have a murder case and a stalking case to investigate, so I’m going to get out of here.”

  “But I thought you were my assistant,” Meg said. “That means you need to assist me.”

  “I am,” I said. “I’m making sure you don’t die.”

  “Fair,” Meg agreed. “Godspeed to you.”

  My first order of business was to take a peek, from a great distance, at Britta Facelli’s bench. She seemed to be sitting idly, still plucking away at her phone, while her little helper was busy bustling around the bench getting it prepared for cake baking.

  A quick Google search on my phone told me that her assistant was Tommy Radicchio, a mousy, sharp-nosed man who had been in and out of prison for a variety of crimes. I wondered if Britta had gotten him off on his charges since none of his stints were very long. Then I wondered why a woman like Britta employed a man like Tommy. Not that it was any of my business.

  Before I could ponder the ins and outs of their working relationship, a buzzer sounded from the front of the room. There was a time call—a one-minute warning for the cookies—and a flurry of hushed breaths. I hustled back to Meg just in time to pop a few eyeball sprinkles on her snowmen cookies.

  “Voila,” I said, adding a teensy carrot nose to her last cookie. “How’s that?”